Virginia Geographic Calendar - April

April 1

- On April Fools Day, two WNOR disc jockeys announced that Mount Trashmore in Virginia Beach was about to explode, warning people within a seven-mile radius to flee.

April 2

- In 1865, the Union Army ended the siege of Petersburg and forced the Army of Northern Virginia under Robert E. Lee to evacuate Petersburg

April 3

-

April 4

-

April 5

- Pocahontas married James Rolfe, in 1614.

April 6

-

April 7

-

April 8

-

April 9

- In 1865, Robert E. Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia to US Grant at Appomattox

- In 1909, the Commonwealh of Virginia executed the last prisoner by the process of hanging.

April 10

-

April 11

- A Virginia Beach judge ruled that a person elected to a school board must live within their district throught their term, forcing an incumbent from office and requiring the remaining school board members to replace the local official

April 12

-

April 13

- In 1743 Thomas Jefferson was born at Shadwell in Goochland County (now in Albemarle County, east of modern-day Charlottesville).

- In 1750 Dr. Thomas Walker's expedition for the Loyal Land Company crosses what he called Cave Gap, which is now known as Cumberland Gap).

- In 1951, students at Moton High School in Farmville staged a surprise walkout. The locally-generated school strike attracted the support of the NAACP office in Richmond, which filed a lawsuit to desegregate the public schools in Prince Edward County. The case was incorporated into Brown v. the Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. Prince Edward County officials closed all public schools between September 1959 to September 1964, the most visible demonstration of Massive Resistance in Virginia.

April 14

-

April 15

-

April 16

- First Conscription Act passed by Confederate Congress

April 17

- Virginia secession convention passed Ordinance of Secession, in 1861

- French evict Virginians from fort they are building at Forks of the Ohio, 1754

April 18

- Opechancanough initiated the Third Anglo-Powhatan War with an attack on English settlements

April 19

-

April 20

- In 2012, a Navy F/A-18D Hornet from Oceana Naval Air Station crashed into 40 apartments in Virginia Beach. No one was hurt in the "Good Friday miracle," but the jet crash demonstrated the dangers of encroachment and land-use conflicts caused by local government approval of new development around military installations.

April 21

- Robert M. T. Hunter born in Essex County (see Library of Congress)

April 22

-

April 23

-

April 24

-

April 25

-

April 26

- Susan Constant, Discovery, and Godspeed reach Cape Henry, 1607. They got a hostile greeting from Native Virginians: "At night, when wee were going aboard, there came the Savages creeping on all foure, from the Hills like Beares, with their Bowes in their mouthes, charged us very desperately in the faces, hurt Captaine Gabrill Archer in both his hands, and a sayler in two places of the body very dangerous. After they had spent their Arrowes, and felt the sharpnesse of our shot, they retired into the Woods with a great noise, and so left us." (George Percy, Observations gathered out of a Discourse of the Plantation of the Southerne Colonie in Virginia by the English, 1606)

- Both the Virginia and West Virginia legislatures issue a new charter for the Covington and Ohio Railroad, a legal requirement because the old Virginia charter was no longer valid for crossing through the new state of West Virginia.

April 27

- 60 people killed in Capitol Disaster, when floor collapses after too many people gather to hear decision in a controversial case at the Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals (located on the upper floor of the capitol), in 1870

April 28

-

April 29

- In 2019, the cruise ship Sunrise sailed from Norfolk to the Bahamas, restarting Norfolk's status as a cruise ship home port.

April 30

- In 2023, a tornado struck Virginia Beach, damaging 100 homes in the Great Neck section of the city.